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For Putin, Syria is all too reminiscent of Chechnya. Both conflicts pitted the state against disparate and leaderless opposition forces, which over time came to include extremist Sunni Islamist groups.
I am very confident based on all of the analysis that has been done - and, again, I don't want to start getting into intelligence matters - that the Ukrainian government did not interfere in our election in 2016.
A U.S. president who is elected amid controversy and recrimination, reviled by a large segment of the electorate, and mired in domestic crises will be hard-pressed to forge a coherent foreign policy and challenge Russia.
President Trump understands that President Putin does not like to be insulted. Putin takes it very personally. He harbors a grudge. He doesn't forget. And he will find some way of getting some degree of revenge as a result of that.
There is certainly this widespread anti-Americanism within the Russian elite, a feeling that the U.S. lost any moral high ground it could possibly have because of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and increasing concern of U.S. intentions locally.
Japan has good reasons for wanting to transform its relationship with Russia. Tokyo has openly expressed serious fears of a military confrontation with Beijing over China's claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.
Everybody used to talk about Chechnya as a place, in the Russian imperial and Soviet periods, that was essentially governed by extended family and regional networks that substituted for older clan structures. But those networks have been destroyed.
I applied to Oxford in the '80s and was invited to an interview. It was like a scene from 'Billy Elliot.' People were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life.
In the instance of Iran for Russia, Iran is a very important counterweight to the Sunni Muslim powers in the Gulf, but Russia's always been very concerned about potentially proselytizing and supporting groups inside of the Russian federation itself.
A desire to contain extremism is a major reason why Putin offered help to the United States in battling the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. It is also why Russia maintains close relations with Shia Iran, which acts as a counterweight to Sunni powers.
Trump knows how to play the media all on his own. He creates his own Twitter feed and uses it. He knows how to get the media's attention without the benefit of a state-controlled media. He does it all on his own. Trump understands how a free media works.
Russia doesn't want to have a return to the situation where it was the United States and say Israel, making determinations about whether there might be a strike against Iran if the negotiations over the nuclear weapons program weren't going in a direction that they wanted to.
The refugee problem is definitely a disaster for the entire region. Putin - the refugee problem in Chechnya was largely contained inside of Russia itself although there were tens of thousands of Chechens who sought refuge across Europe. Putin wasn't swayed by that issue when it came to Chechnya.
Ironically, from our perspective, Russia finds Iran a stabilizing force. This is because Iran provides a counterweight to all of the Sunni Muslim powers in the region, being predominantly Shia. And Putin actually sees, and the rest of the Russian leadership, sees Iran very much as a rational actor.
I got a PhD from Harvard and a few years later, there was a girl from Sunderland who hadn't got into Oxford or Cambridge, even though she'd got perfect A-levels. Harvard asked me to come and recruit her because I was recruited out of university by Harvard - they were trying to show that people could make it.